Where Is This Going, What Is This All About, This Real-Time?

Image by Rick Leche via Flickr

Real-Time has got many influential figures in the industry howling at the moon over the last few months.

This afternoon many of these people were present at the TechCrunch Real-Time CrunchUp conference to discuss where is this going, what is this all about, this real-time?

They're all scratching their heads trying to find the answers, relevance and value. The aim to not only scratch the surface but how to consume real-time data.

Robert Scoble, who is currently in London, was a notable absentee although he participated (via web) in a panel with Michael Arrington and Bret Taylor about the "mob mentality" perceived on Friendfeed. Unfortunately he experienced sound problems trying to communicate but the outcome from the panel was that Arrington is prepared to return to the service. He deleted his account after an exchange with Leo Laporte during a taping of the Gillmor Gang last month which resulted in a lot of negativity.

Louis Gray who covered many of the main developments at the conference exceptionally well provided a threaded conversation of this panel on Friendfeed. Basically Bret states that one of the main things the Friendfeed team are going to do is give the option to turn off comments in specific entries. You can turn off comments in your entries and feeds. That's a practical thing that they can do. There are other ideas, but they are being tested. Just as Louis states it shouldn't be long until these are implemented considering the speed of feature improvements thus far as an indication.

There were several panels and announcements that took place at the Real-Time CrunchUp. Those that interested me were; Brizzly from the creators of Google Reader which sounds intriguing, referred to as a Twitter Reader "fast, simple, and enhances reading and creation.” Anything that's compared to Google Reader warrants attention which is why I was interested in LazyFeed after reading Louis Gray's post earlier in the week which spoke highly of the functionality provided. I was able to secure an Invitation Code and I must admit I'm impressed.

I also managed to secure an Invitation Code to Mag.ma a new online video startup that looks to help surface interesting new videos in real-time. I briefly used this service and I feel that video that doesn't allow embedding will be a problem for the startup. Finally Seesmic announced it's launching a browser-based Twitter client, I haven't tried this yet so welcome any views.

We're still a distance from realising the real-time vision but with everyone working together it does seem to be on the horizon..

Related articles by Zemanta

• Track is Back The Movie (techcrunchit.com)
• FriendFeed Adds Real-Time Search Results (mashable.com)